After all my applications were sent, I finally decided to go south, back home to Mississippi. It was high time I faced Mama, Papa, and Big Ma. With the possibility of law school looming in my future, I figured I was strong enough to keep them from worrying about me. I stayed in Toledo through Christmas. In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, my brothers drove me south. The plant, as usual, was shut down during the holidays, so it was a good time for them. They stayed several days, then left in time to be back in Toledo for New Year’s Day.
* * *
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“You sure this is what you want to do?” asked Papa after the boys were gone. “Go into law?”
I answered honestly. “No, sir, I’m not, But I’ve got to do something.”
“You know I was hoping you’d go into teaching,” Mama said, persisting in her dream for me.
I just shook my head and smiled.
“Well, still . . . I know you’d be a good teacher.”
“Child be good at anything she do,” asserted Big Ma.
Mama didn’t dispute that. “But a lawyer . . . that’s a high undertaking. You know of any colored women lawyers?”
“I don’t even know of any white women lawyers,” I admitted.
“It’s a hard course,” said Mama, “for anybody.”
“You saying I can’t do it, Mama?”
“No, Cassie, I’m not saying that. You know Papa and I have always said you can do anything you set your mind to do. Only thing I worry about is your state of mind right now and if you’re strong enough to take on all that studying.”
I considered Mama’s words. “Maybe that’s what I need, Mama. Something difficult to concentrate on.”
Mama said nothing else. I glanced at Papa, who remained silent.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
During that first week of the new year, I asked Papa to take me to see Mr. Wade Jamison. We went to his office in Strawberry, and as always, Mr. Jamison seemed pleased to see us. I told Mr. Jamison about my applications to law schools and he said, “Well, I’m happy to hear that, Cassie.”
“You asked me to let you know if I decided to become a lawyer. I want you to know you helped to inspire me to this decision. I believe that knowing the law can help change things, and there certainly are things needing to be changed.”
Papa glanced my way, but said nothing. Mr. Jamison nodded without speaking. I knew he understood what I meant.
I went on. “I wanted you to know about my applications and ask if you would write a recommendation for me. I have several already from Colorado and Toledo, but I believe a recommendation from a lawyer in my home state could carry a lot of weight. You’ve known me since I was a child and you know so much of what people in my community have been through. You could give a character recommendation about who I am through the eyes of a Mississippi lawyer, something none of the other people writing recommendations can do. Yours would be going in later than the others, but it can still be submitted.” I paused, waiting for his reply. “Will you write one for me, Mr. Jamison?”
Mr. Jamison looked at Papa, then again at me. “I’d be most pleased to do that, Cassie.” He smiled. “Very pleased.”
Returning home, Papa said, “I’m right proud of you, Cassie. Always have been. I’m proud of your decision and how you’re going on with your life. But there’s something I need to know. You tell me, baby girl, how you’re really doing. Your Uncle Hammer wrote about how things were right after your husband died.”
“I’m fine, Papa.”
“Are you?”
“I miss Flynn. I’m always going to miss him and what we could have had. But I’m all right, Papa. Don’t worry about me.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry. You’ve been through a lot this past year. Now you’re talking about going off to some northern state where you’ve got no family, nobody you know, to study in a field where few black folks have gone and, yes, I am gonna worry about you. Your mama and your grandma are gonna worry too. I’m always gonna worry about you. No matter you get to be sixty years old and I’m still around, I’m gonna worry.”
I grinned at the thought. “I know, Papa, but believe me, I’ll be fine.”
“In time, find a good man, Cassie, marry again. You need a partner in life. Don’t go through it alone.”
I repeated, “I promise, Papa, I’ll be all right. I’m your daughter, so take my word for it. I’ll be fine.”
* * *
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Both Mama and Big Ma talked to me about the loss of my baby and the loss of Flynn. “I know your heart has to be crying,” Mama said. “My heart is crying for you, for you losing your husband, for you not going through your lives together, growing old together. When a woman loves a man, loves her husband like you loved Flynn, it’s a loss that can’t be measured. I know it’s too soon now to be thinking on it, marrying again and having children, but you’re young. Even after you graduate law school you’ll be young. Find yourself a good man. Maybe he won’t be like your Flynn, but a good man like him. Make yourself a family. Have children. It’ll take time . . . and there is time.”
Big Ma pretty much had the same advice. “You go ahead and grieve for this man of yours. You grieve for this boy Flynn. You grieve for yo’ husband like you s’pose to. But then, child, you get on with yo’ life like God meant for you t’ do. You find yo’self another love and give yo’self to that love. Have yo’self another child. I done it, and that’s what you gotta do too.”
They were all saying the same thing to me. Big Ma, Mama, Papa. But I wasn’t ready to hear any of it. I walked the land with them and alone, and when I was alone, that was the only time I let the tears come. I sat on one of the fallen trees by the pond and cried, screamed up to heaven, and felt unable to stop. I felt raw inside. I missed Flynn’s touch. I missed his touch in the morning, his touch at night. His loving me. I missed his laughter, his beautiful face, his beautiful body, his golden smile. I missed the safety of his arms.
No man could ever give me that again.
* * *
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Letters from the law schools arrived in early spring. I had been accepted at each school. The schools that interested me most were Howard University School of Law and Boston University School of Law. Now I had to choose. If I went to Howard—the oldest Negro law school, established only years after slavery in 1869, a law school with an impeccable reputation but an all-Negro student body—I could be comfortable in classes with other Negro students, facing the same challenges together. Or I could go to Boston University School of Law, which had graduated its first Negro student in 1877 and opened its doors to all. As when I took classes at the University of Toledo, at UCLA, and at the University of Colorado, at Boston University School of Law I would be in an interracial setting, learning side by side with white students, interacting with them on all levels, and being challenged by them.